Academia

Academic Courses

The Army Medical Services (AMS) delivers world-class international military medical capability. Key to this role is the Medical Support Officer (MSO). This programme will enable the future MSO to draw upon insightful learning from a wide variety of public health related experiences, to ensure healthcare effectiveness, population safety, and wellbeing in military contexts.This is the first time UK defence medical services will be preparing their MSO students to post graduate level.

Centre Staff Academic Activities

Writing for Publication Workshop

Members of the Faculty of Health came together on Saturday 5th August 2017 for a writing for publication workshop. Professor Alan Finnegan, the Assistant Editor of Nurse Education Today and a member of Journal of Advanced Nursing international editorial board facilitated the event, with the primary outcome to produce peer reviewed publications. The attendees were extremely motivated and the session went really well. The participants intend to meet to maintain momentum, and thanked Matt Rimmer for organizing the event. Further workshops will be available in 2018.

It was a great honour to host Professor Kevin Kip’s 3h Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) workshop on 20th July 2017. Kevin’s lecture provide huge insight in the Innovative Mental Health Intervention to Treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Kevin E. Kip, Ph.D. is a tenured Distinguished Health Professor, epidemiologist, and biostatistician with 16 years of experience on U.S. Federal, Department of Defense and industry-funded studies. His background is interdisciplinary with more than 160 peer-reviewed publications. With multi-million dollar funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, he established the Research to Improve Emotional Health/Quality of Life of Service Members with Disabilities, (RESTORE LIVES) Center at the University of South Florida. Through this centre, he is the leading researcher worldwide in the study of ART, an emerging, brief, and evidence-based method of psychotherapy for treatment of PTSD. In 2016, Kevin was awarded a US Army contract to train military clinicians in the treatment of PTSD. This will provide training in ART for military psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and li-censed clinical social workers. This follows on from previous training of military clinicians in ART at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre, Bethesda, Md.; Fort Belvoir, Va.; Fort Hood, Texas; and Fort Benning, Ga. This will be the first ART workshop conducted in England.

Professor Alan Finnegan FRCN has been appointed as a Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Alan has been working with colleagues from the Universities of Salford and UCLan and has designed an educational model. The intent is to introduce the care of the Armed Forces Community (AFC) sessions into the Nursing undergraduate programme. The aim is to provide insight into the Armed Forces Community and the specific biopsychosocial needs aligned to their care, health and wellbeing. Professor Finnegan has recently conducted a pilot session at the University of Chester. The presentation is aligned to a full appraisal consisting of pre and post testing, evaluation and recommendations for future development. The initial results appear very positive. The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust award will help support Alan in travelling to the USA to study approaches for preparing nurses to care for military veterans and the armed forces community.

November 2016 was an especially busy period for external presentations, with visits to the 3 capital cities of Ireland, Scotland and England. First up was a lecture on the 9th November regarding the psychological stressors of providing clinical care in war zones. This was included in the Caring in Times of Conflict theme at the 17th Healthcare Interdisciplinary Conference at Trinity College Dublin. The paper was published in the US Nursing Outlook journal – available at: http://www.nursingoutlook.org/article/S0029-6554(16)30067-7/pdfNext was a visit to Edinburgh Napier University on the 18 November to present “Nurses in Conflict”. This was the 3rd Nurse Education Today International Lecture (see photo). The lecture was streamed live and can be viewed via Youtube at: http://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/content/ynedt-lecture-video-2016. This keynote was embedded within the outstanding Scottish Universities Enhancing Nursing Through Educational Research (ENTER) conference.The third trip was on 23 November to the QEII Centre in Westminster London for the Royal College of Nursing’s Centenary Conference where I gave a presentation titled “The Characteristics and Values of a British Military Nurse.” This lecture accompanies an article published earlier this year in Nurse Education Today. A short video author presentation is available at: http://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/article/S0260-6917(15)00300-7/abstract and the article at: http://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/article/S0260-6917(15)00300-7/pdf

Professor Alan Finnegan - Academic Visit to the USA

In October 2016, I was privileged to have the opportunity to visit and provide presentations at the University of South Florida and Ohio State University. Both Universities have exceptional Colleges of Nursing.My trip to Ohio was to help maintain momentum with the collaborative links that the University of Chester has developed, and to look at moving ahead with research and academic initiatives. Under the stewardship of Bernadette Melnyk, the Dean and Vice President for Health Promotion, the College of Nursing has recently received the largest philanthropic gift in college history with a $6.5 million grant to establish and permanently endow the Helene Fuld Health Trust National institute for Evidence-based Practice in Nursing and healthcare.As a Courtesy Professor in Nursing at the University of South Florida, I was once again made especially welcome back in Tampa, even if my visit co-in sided with Hurricane Matthew. The support that USF provides for the Veteran community if quite staggering, with some of these outstanding initiatives featured in a Nurse Education Today Special Issue - http://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/issue/S0260-6917(16)X0012-3 I was able to get excellent guidance from Professor’s John Clochesy, Constance Visovsky and Kevin Kip amongst others. It was also a delight to welcome USF’s Lieutenant Colonel Stephen McGhee as the US link member to our Westminster Centre. I am hoping that we see many of our US colleagues at the Westminster Centre’s Veterans Research Conference on 5 October 2017.